Legal PA

Watson Farley & Williams is an international law firm advising on complex disputes and transactions through local knowledge and an integrated international network.  We have a strong sector focus, combining our technical excellence with deep industry knowledge across Energy, Transport and associated Infrastructure.

The firm has achieved rapid expansion and year-on-year growth owed almost entirely to a focused strategy, strong leadership and the quality of its people.  The next stage in the firm’s growth plan is to achieve full-service strength within core sectors across the global platform.

We strive for excellence in all that we do and view investment in our people as key to achieving our business goals and values, which rest on developing deep and long-lasting relationships externally and internally through respect, sharing, communication and integrity.

Our global practice is integrated across our offices in Europe, the Middle East, Asia, Australia and North America delivering consistently high levels of service across borders and locally through a deep understanding of local business customs and culture.

We are committed to creating an inclusive workplace to attract and retain the most talented people from all backgrounds and cultures.  We believe in celebrating difference and that people from any background can rise to the top, ensuring opportunities to develop and progress are available for all.

To provide skilled administrative and secretarial support to an assigned group of senior fee earners, helping to maximise the effectiveness of the lawyers’ practices.  The Legal PA works as part of a team, proactively assisting the Dispute Resolution group in order to meet deadlines or share workload.

Denise Hunt, Secretarial Services Manager

Client Service:

• Proactively managing and maintaining diary planning and coordination for allocated fee earners, making appointments and co-ordinating internal and external client meetings, identifying and resolving potential challenges and clashes. Ensuring arrangements are made for equipment, venue and resources and that fee earners have all necessary paperwork.
• Travel management, booking transport, hotels, client meetings and producing detailed itineraries.
• Coordinating business development and client liaison initiatives for fee earners, including updating database information and assisting with marketing initiatives and events (including occasional support at event e.g. registration desk).
• Proactively dealing with all aspects of claiming expenses, including InterAction entries.
• Liaising with the Firm's clients in a confident and professional manner, building strong working relationships with clients and contacts. 
• Dealing professionally and promptly with client (internal and external) telephone calls and communications, including calls diverted to the team.
• Creating, uploading and general maintenance of client sites and extranets.

Technical and Organisational Skills:

• Monitoring fee earners' mailboxes when they are out of the office or attending a long meeting, responding to emails as necessary and prioritising correspondence to enable fee earners to focus on urgent matters. 
• Using initiative to route emails to the appropriate individuals for swift response and action; wherever possible, responding to and filing emails in Filesite on behalf of partners and fee earners to reduce volume.
• Preparing bills, including resolving queries and dealing with outstanding fees, maintaining accurate billing/contact details, preparation of narratives and drafting first bills with covering correspondence for partner approval.  Assisting fee earners by liaising with the billing team, and following up with debt recovery as requested.
• Proactively ensuring Carpe Diem is updated for all allocated fee earners, particularly for holiday or sickness absence.  Informing the Legal PA Co-ordinator if a fee earner is working from home or absent due to holiday or sickness.
• Providing secretarial assistance to assigned fee-earners, which includes audio typing, copy typing, formatting documents, creating correspondence, pitches and presentations.  Delegating complex and lengthy documents to the Document Production Team, ensuring requirements and timescales are clearly set out. 
• Coordinating the opening of new client matters and assisting with Anti-Money Laundering processes.  Undertaking as much research as possible before passing over to the Partner for approval.
• Organising client documents (delegating scanning, formatting, photocopying and collating of information where necessary) for client meetings or hearings and carrying out research as required.
• Management and delegation of client filing and regular updating of client relationship management systems (Interaction), archiving historic files or closed matters.  

Personal Effectiveness and Teamworking:

• Working with a Legal PA Buddy or within the Legal PA team to provide assistance to fee earners in the group, prioritising own workload as required.
• Working closely within the team to provide general support to the group across rotas or core hours, including assisting during periods of high demand or helping other practice areas when required.
• Attending and participating in LPA team meetings.
• Proactively mentoring, coaching and assisting Junior Legal PAs and Team Admin Assistants to reach their full potential.

Professional Conduct:

• Liaising with the team, stakeholders and clients in a professional and courteous manner, building and maintaining effective working relationships.
• Being proactive and having a flexible attitude for any other ad-hoc tasks.

At least five years’ previous experience in a legal secretarial role within Dispute Resolution is required.

• Excellent knowledge of Outlook, Word, PowerPoint and Excel.
• Clear and professional in both written and verbal communication.
• Highly organised and able to assist others with the management of their practices.

Accurate with a high level of attention to detail.

• Enthusiastic, can-do, positive approach to tasks and situations, as well as requests for action outside normal scope of duties.
• Remaining calm and focussed under pressure, delegating and requesting assistance when necessary.
• Ability to take personal responsibility, ownership and behave responsibly.
• Friendly, co-operative and approachable and all times.
• A team player who works in a flexible manner to assist the group, collaborating with others in sharing work and knowledge.
• Listening carefully to instructions and questioning intelligently to ensure all the information required to undertake a task has been gained.
• Pro-active and flexible attitude for any other ad-hoc tasks.
• Ability to maintain tact and diplomacy, trust and confidentiality.
• Excellent client service.
• Using initiative to continually assess where the role can be developed.
• Willingness to broaden skills to meet evolving requirements.

We offer a competitive benefits and wellbeing package for all employees.

The Firm promotes a culture of agility and flexibility and is fully supportive of flexible working arrangements where these can be accommodated.

Respect for different backgrounds and perspectives is at the heart of our firm’s core values and we recognise the importance of fostering an inclusive environment that allows everyone to reach their full potential. This is a key feature of our Global Code of Conduct, which places diversity and inclusion at the centre of our firm’s ways of working.

We believe that exceptional client service can only be delivered by exceptional people. For this reason, we aim to attract, retain and develop the best talent from a wide range of backgrounds. All decisions relating to employment will be objective and based on merit and ability.

We are committed to ensuring that our recruitment processes are as inclusive and barrier-free as possible. This includes making adjustments for candidates with a disability or long-term health condition.  If you require adjustments to be made at any stage of the recruitment process, we’d encourage you to get in touch with a member of our team who would be happy to discuss options with you.